▶ Linked Data for Digital Humanities

Computers:Students are not required to bring their own laptops for this workshop. Desktop computers will be provided by DHOxSSS

Abstract

The work of a digital humanities researcher is informed by the possibilities offered in digital resources: in their ever increasing number and their distribution and access through the Internet. In this context, the Semantic Web can be seen as a framework to enable radical publication, sharing, and linking of data for, and by, researchers.

This workshop introduces the concepts and technologies behind Linked Data and the Semantic Web and teaches attendees how they can publish their research so that it is available in these forms for reuse by other humanities scholars, and how to access and manipulate Linked Data resources provided by others. The Semantic Web tools and methods described over the week use distinct but interwoven models to represent services, data collections, workflows, and -- so to simplify the rapid development of integrated applications to explore specific findings -- the domain of an application. Topics covered will include: the RDF format; modelling your data and publishing to the web; Linked Data; querying RDF data using SPARQL; and choosing and designing vocabularies and ontologies.

The workshop comprises a series of lectures and hands-on tutorials. Lectures introduce theoretical concepts in the context of Semantic Web systems deployed in and around the humanities, many of which are introduced by their creators. Lectures are paired with practical sessions in which attendees are guided through their own exploration of the topics covered.

Schedule Details

Monday

11:00 - 12:30

This session will introduce the participants to the key topics for the week, explaining how they fit into the over-all scheme of the week and how they relate to one another. It sets the scene for the motivations behind adopting the Linked Data publication paradigm, and addresses the practical aspects that will need to be considered by anyone wishing to use Linked Data in their own work.

14:00 - 16:00

In this session we introduce ElEPHaT, a prototype project centring on Early English literature (1473 - 1700). The session includes some background information on the project, but predominantly consists of hands-on exploration of the project's RDF triples using simple existing interfaces and tools.

16:30 - 17:30

This talk will describe the creation and progress of nomisma.org, a namespace and ontology for numismatic concepts. It will also introduce some of the exciting new tools that are being built within the world of numismatic Linked Open Data.

Tuesday

11:00 - 12:30

Ontologies are structural frameworks, which are used to map the "truth" of a given domain. These structures determine possible relationships between entities within the dataset, and are essential for reasoning and inference. In this session, participants will encounter numerous exmaples capturing a wide range of specialisms within the Humanities (CIDOC-CRM, Bibframe, to name but a few) and for other types of more generic (meta)data (DublinCore, PROV-O,etc).

14:00 - 16:00

In this practical session participans will collaborate to create their own ontologies to capture and represent a given subject domain. The session will give participants the opportunity to engage in all the stages of ontology development, including design, implementation, reiteration, and documentation.

Wednesday

11:00 - 12:30

In this session we revisit the ElEPHaT project from Monday, with a more specific look at the way information is structured, and how it can be queried and retrieved. The basics of writing SPARQL queries are covered. The discussion will also cover different possible options and alternatives for triplestores, and the ways in which to indentify those that fit a particular data and/or research requirement.

16:30 - 17:30

Thursday

11:00 - 12:30

In this talk, participants will find out how University of Oxford, in collaboration with the Mellon-funded ResearchSpace project, is linking and sharing academic research data with data from museums and libraries. There will be a particular focus on OXLOD (Oxford Linked Open Data), and demos of Digital Cultural Heritage India: American Institute of Indian Studies, Archaeological Survey of India, City Palace Museum Udaipur; and Digital Cultural Heritage China: Zhejiang University and CADAL (China Academic Digital Associative Library).

14:00 - 16:00

Hands on: Exploring and using the British Museum Endpoint, from mapping to representation and semantic queryDominic Oldman

16:30 - 17:30

Hands on: Exploring and using the British Museum Endpoint, from mapping to representation and semantic query. [Continued]

Friday

11:00 - 12:30

This session is an introduction to Recogito - a tool developed by the Pelagios project for identifying geographic place references in historical documents and maps. It will cover both aspects of semantic place annotation - geotagging and georesolution - in texts and images, as well as the practical benefits of doing so, including search, analysis and mapping.

14:00 - 16:00

In this hands on session, participants will be introduced to case study examples and use cases from the Linked Data world. They will have the opportunity to use existing open-source software to generate RDF triples.

16:30 - 17:30

This session is an opportunity for participants to get answers to project-specific and idiosyncratic problems. Discussion will cover the types of practical and pragmatic decisions that need to be made in the building and developing of projects using Linked Data, and participants will be asked to brain-storm ways in which these technologies will apply to their existing work.

This conversation can extend to the informal pub visit with other DHOxSS delegates and speakers (purely optional).